Field
The described embodiments relate to techniques for routing a user within a website. More specifically, the described embodiments relate to techniques for routing the user to different web pages within the website based on a history of user activity and one or more user-experience criteria.
Related Art
Social networks are an increasingly popular format for aggregating and interconnecting individuals who have similar interests. For example, a website may provide a professional social network for individuals in the workforce. These users may ‘connect’ with each other, thereby defining subsets of interrelated users in the social network. In principle, these interrelated users can facilitate a wide variety of value-added services, such as helping: the users find employment, employers recruit employees, educational institutions identify prospective students, etc. More generally, the interrelated users in a social network may facilitate targeted communication among the users.
In practice, in order to optimally achieve these capabilities, a social network typically needs to have a minimum size (i.e., a minimum number of users and/or a minimum number of interrelated users). Furthermore, the quality of the value-added services provided via a social network is usually increased as the number of users and the number of interrelated users in the social network increases. Consequently, a provider of the social network typically wants to increase the number of users and their interrelationships in the social network.
One approach for growing the size of the social network (i.e., adding more users) is to provide invitation messages. For example, invitation messages to connect with a user may be provided to other users in the social network and/or individuals who are not currently users of the social network. Note that the former are sometimes referred to as ‘in-network people,’ and the latter are sometimes referred to as ‘out-of-network people.’ In addition, note that invitation messages provided to the in-network people are sometimes referred to as ‘member-to-member invitations,’ and invitation messages provided to the out-of-network people are sometimes referred to as ‘member-to-guest invitations.’
Typically, potential in-network or out-of-network people who may be possible connections for the user are displayed to the user. Then, if the user selects one of the possible connections, an invitation message (such as an email) is provided to the possible connections. If this individual accepts the invitation (e.g., by activating a link included in the invitation message), they will be ‘connected’ or interrelated with the user in the social network if they already use the social network or they will be invited to join the social network if they do not already use the social network.
However, this process poses several challenges. Notably, the user may become bored after repeatedly viewing lists of possible connections. In particular, user fatigue and the relevance of the possible connections may, over time, reduce user interest in selecting possible connections, which may reduce the number of invitation messages that are provided (and, thus, may constrain the number of interrelated users and/or the number of users in the social network).
Note that like reference numerals refer to corresponding parts throughout the drawings. Moreover, multiple instances of the same part are designated by a common prefix separated from an instance number by a dash.